After five years of filming and 13 months of editing, Burlington native Ben Nabors was officially headed to South by Southwest.

His first feature-length documentary, “William and the Windmill,” was one of eight documentaries selected for the music and arts festival’s film competition, held annually in Austin, Texas. Based on the strength of the 31-year-old’s 2008 short, “Moving Windmills,” and the compelling story of its protagonist, William Kamkwamba — who revolutionized his Malawian village as a teenager by building a windmill out of spare parts — South by Southwest Film Festival jurors expected great things. Hundreds of films were submitted to compete in the festival.

But first, Nabors had to finish it.

The film festival began March 8. That same day, the Williams High School graduate finished post-production on the film — a 13-month process sifting through more than 400 hours and 11 terabytes of digital footage. He sent the film by Fed-Ex to the film competition’s organizers and made his own preparations to fly from his Brooklyn home to the Texas spectacle.

“It was really a buzzer-beater. I know some people were nervous that it was going to get there at all,” Nabors said.

“William and the Windmill” premiered March 10 and was greeted enthusiastically by audiences. At the film festival’s end, Nabors’ film won the grand jury prize for documentary feature.

“I think they found something in our film that was unique,” Nabors said. “We had a standing ovation after our first premiere. The subject, William, is just an incredible person. People are just drawn to him.”

Kamkwambe’s story became a global sensation after he gave a TED Talk in 2007. TED stands for Technology Entertainment Design and its conferences attract world-renowned thinkers and industry leaders.

As a child in Malawi, a country in eastern Africa, he was forced to quit school because his parents couldn’t afford the $80 a year to send him. Unable to attend school, he read books in the library and became fascinated with windmills. He taught himself how to build one out of scrap parts, using an old lawnmower blade for the fan, that could generate electricity. He attached a thin copper wire to a car battery and light bulbs in each of the rooms in his family’s home.

As he built more and better windmills, his family’s life improved. He also built his village’s first water pump, which is solar powered.

Kamkwambe became focused on bringing electricity and water to other places in Malawi and Africa.

It was the TED Talk and Tom Reilly, an acquaintance of Nabors’ who’d taken Kamkwambe under his wing, that got Nabors interested in filming the story.

His cameras followed as Kamkwambe traveled the globe, becoming famous and sought out.

Nabors’ film follows him through changes and challenges of balancing the newfound attention with his personal goals of building his life and bettering his homeland with practical solutions to common problems.

Page 2 of 2 - “Documentary filmmaking is a search. You have to trust your subject and your idea and see what comes out of it. We followed the story not knowing where it would go,” Nabors said. “He’s a young person maneuvering things I’ve never seen anyone maneuver. He finds himself between two cultures.”

NABORS GREW UPin Burlington, attending Smith Elementary and Turrentine Middle. While a student at Williams, he worked at the now-closed West End Cinemas. He was always interested in movies but didn’t see a practical future in it, he said.

At Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., he studied event planning. Following graduation, he relocated to Brooklyn, N.Y., and worked as a professional event organizer and producer. Somewhere along the way, he transitioned into filmmaking.

He joined Group Theory, a collective of independent filmmakers and producers in Brooklyn. He’s been busy behind the camera ever since.

“Palimpsest,” a short film he wrote and produced, took a jury prize for acting at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. It’s now slated to be produced as a feature-length movie.

For several years, he’s been producing a behind-the-scenes documentary about the tumultuous run of the “Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark” musical on Broadway. Among other projects, a feature-length documentary about Stefan Sagmeister — a graphic designer whose experiments with his own personal happiness he turned into art exhibits — is also in the works.

Nabors still has family and friends in Burlington and returns here often. His “wonderful” mother, Jean Anderson, was able to attend the premiere of “William and the Windmill,” he said.

“William and the Windmill” is slated to show at several more film festivals in Toronto and Oregon this spring. He hopes the film will show in North Carolina, but nothing has been scheduled yet. Eventually, it will be available on DVD, he said.

You can watch Nabors’ short, “Moving Windmills,” online at www.movingwindmills.org.

Michael D. Abernethy can be reached at mabernethy@thetimesnews.com or 336-506-3042.